With Mac OS X Lion now unleashed on the Mac App Store, Apple has also introduced a new version of iTunes that is both 64-bit and full-screen capable, in addition to full-screen version of iWork that will also leverage several other Lion features [update: now available].

Updated: iWork Update 6 (90.2MB) and iTunes 10.4 (64.1MB) are now both available via Software Update. In addition, Apple on Wednesday also released Remote Desktop Client Update 3.5.1 (3.6MB).

The updates to both iWork and iTunes add features found in Lion, Apple's new operating system released on Wednesday. Both the iWork suite and iTunes support full-screen mode, while Pages, Numbers and Keynote will also gain Resume, Auto Save and Versions functionality.

Earlier Wednesday, AppleInsider was provided screenshots of pre-release downloads via Software Update, revealing ahead of time that Apple with iTunes 10.4 will also upgrade the media client to a full-fledged Cocoa application with 64-bit support.

Apple's internal release notes revealed that some iTunes plug-ins may no longer be compatible with iTunes 10.4. Users are advised to contact the responsible plug-in developer to receive an update that is compatible with the latest version of iTunes.

Apple began to push 64-bit with Snow Leopard, its previous-generation operating system, which featured 64-bit support in its kernel. While 64-bit support has been added to applications over the years, including the recently released Final Cut Pro X, iTunes became something of an anomaly without Cocoa and 64-bit support.

Set to be added to both iTunes and iWork, full-screen application support is one of the hallmark features of Lion. With a quick multi-touch gesture, users can quickly switch between active applications in Lion.

Lion also features Resume, which brings applications back exactly how they were left when restarting a Mac, or just quitting and relaunching the application. The new Auto Save functionality automatically and continuously saves iWork documents as users work on them.

Another new feature is Versions, which automatically records the history of a document as it is created. Using Versions, users can also easily browse, revert and copy and paste from previous versions of a document or file in iWork, or other Lion-compatible applications.

Mac OS X 10.7 also features AirDrop, a new built-in feature that finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection. This makes transferring files and documents between Macs quick and easy.

Difficult to imagine a world where iTunes isn't a piece of festering sewage. Maybe things are better in MacOS now, but in the Windows world iTunes is unimaginably terrible. No other piece of mainstream, mass market software is so crushingly slow, so staggeringly unstable, and so painfully clumsy to use.

just downloaded the update for snow leopard. riddle me this; if itunes is now "proper" cocoa/64-bit, then why is it incompatible with app extensions such as Afloat? also, the fact that it's 64-bit for Lion only leads me to believe that some OS-level hackery has been employed to make this happen

iTunes 10.4 looks very nice. Some nice eye candy. The out of character vertical buttons are gone and it seems very snappy. I'm assuming that it is using the Lion graphic elements. I'm at a university so I haven't updated to Lion yet (waiting for my IT guys to get me the file on a disk), but even on SL it seems a big improvement. And I can confirm that it is a 32 bit app on SL.

Difficult to imagine a world where iTunes isn't a piece of festering sewage. Maybe things are better in MacOS now, but in the Windows world iTunes is unimaginably terrible. No other piece of mainstream, mass market software is so crushingly slow, so staggeringly unstable, and so painfully clumsy to use.

I use it only to buy my Jpop from the Japanese iTunes store and to keep my iPhone 3GS (now iPod Touch 3GS due to my upgrade to a Windows Phone).

For playback, I use the Zune desktop software because iTunes is so slow. If Apple would clean up the Windows version of iTunes I would switch back to iTunes as a media player.

Difficult to imagine a world where iTunes isn't a piece of festering sewage. Maybe things are better in MacOS now, but in the Windows world iTunes is unimaginably terrible. No other piece of mainstream, mass market software is so crushingly slow, so staggeringly unstable, and so painfully clumsy to use.

Funny, I personally know at least 4 died-in-the-wool Windows users who say that iTunes runs just fine on their XP, Vista, and 7 systems. I guess it's just you. Fix your Windows box would be my advice.

As someone who edits tags on a daily basis and dreads waiting for iTunes to advance to the next track, I am thrilled to report 10.4 is radically faster than all versions to date. Finally an iTunes that is as fast as humans.

But the list and source UP & DOWN Arrows were gone front he top and bottom of each column. Bummer. Guess I'll have to write a feedback form to ask for them back. Use them a lot of the time.

Looks like iTunes 10.4 works on 10.6 and even 10.5 (including G5s). But still only runs 32 bit under 10.6? What the hell, is that so hard to make that work?

Hopefully it will run a bit better since it's cocoa, but having a 64 bit app but only on the newer OS is just dumb and smacks of intentionally trying to cripple it on the older OS.

What's the obsession people have with making things 64 bit? Beign 64 bit doesn't mean its faster unless you actually have files big enough to take advantage of it, if you don't then it's just slower. I guess if you use iTunes for films then it will be faster for that, apart from that though everything else will be slower with speed improvmements just being a result of actual coding improvements.

question about iWork for Mac.. Is there only one release of iWork apps, which will always be upgraded via the same app? I'm not sure if I'm asking this the right way. In other words, when iWork 11 comes out, will it be an entirely new app, to download from the Mac AppStore? I want iWork but don't want to buy it twice.

Beign 64 bit doesn't mean its faster unless you actually have files big enough to take advantage of it

That's false. 64 bit code generally runs faster because the intel hardware includes 64 bit registers (and there may be other reasons as well).

And this is borne out with benchmarks, I have yet to see an app that doesn't run at least a little bit faster in 64 bit mode. That includes things like Safari which gets a nice boost from running in 64 bit even though most users are never going to get to the point where it's using more than 4 gigs of ram.

Why the defense of Apple's failing to get this right?

10.6 is a 64 bit OS. Almost every other Apple app in 10.6 is 64 bit. What possible reason would there be for a 64 bit app to only run in that mode on the newer OS? I guess it's possible that the code in iTunes is so old and kludgy that they couldn't update it all to 64 bit and they're piling on yet another kludge to make it sort of be a 64 bit app in a way that only works on 10.7, but I certainly hope they're not in that bad of shape.

That's false. 64 bit code generally runs faster because the intel hardware includes 64 bit registers (and there may be other reasons as well).

And this is borne out with benchmarks, I have yet to see an app that doesn't run at least a little bit faster in 64 bit mode. That includes things like Safari which gets a nice boost from running in 64 bit even though most users are never going to get to the point where it's using more than 4 gigs of ram.

Why the defense of Apple's failing to get this right?

10.6 is a 64 bit OS. Almost every other Apple app in 10.6 is 64 bit. What possible reason would there be for a 64 bit app to only run in that mode on the newer OS? I guess it's possible that the code in iTunes is so old and kludgy that they couldn't update it all to 64 bit and they're piling on yet another kludge to make it sort of be a 64 bit app in a way that only works on 10.7, but I certainly hope they're not in that bad of shape.

It seems very strange that a company willing to pour resources into something that will only last a little while (like Rosetta) and not iTunes. Perhaps, amid rumors of iPods being slashed away, that iTunes will disappear soon? i.e. Music integrated into the MAS.

That's false. 64 bit code generally runs faster because the intel hardware includes 64 bit registers (and there may be other reasons as well).

It depends entirely on what the application is doing. A 64-bit application can also run slower than its 32-bit equivalent due to issues like the increased pointer size. An application is not guaranteed to automatically become faster after porting to 64-bit.

It depends entirely on what the application is doing. A 64-bit application can also run slower than its 32-bit equivalent due to issues like the increased pointer size. An application is not guaranteed to automatically become faster after porting to 64-bit.

So what's a specific example of an app running slower in 64 bit, I have yet to see one. Even apps like Safari are measurably faster in 64, the difference was benchmarked when it first shipped.

And if some apps would be faster in 32, why does apple have all of their apps default to run in 64? Including this new iTunes on 10.7 - it's simple enough for someone running Lion to make the comparison - does it run faster in 64 or 32? I'll bet the difference isn't huge but 64 IS faster.

So what's a specific example of an app running slower in 64 bit, I have yet to see one.

The increased memory usage can affect cache performance.

Quote:

Even apps like Safari are measurably faster in 64, the difference was benchmarked when it first shipped.

Yes, Safari's Javascript engine benefits from 64-bit mode.

Quote:

And if some apps would be faster in 32, why does apple have all of their apps default to run in 64? Including this new iTunes on 10.7 - it's simple enough for someone running Lion to make the comparison - does it run faster in 64 or 32? I'll bet the difference isn't huge but 64 IS faster.

I didn't suggest Apple shouldn't be moving to 64-bit entirely. One reason is to avoid having to load in 32-bit versions of the frameworks when a 32-bit application is launched. I'm just pointing out that a 64-bit application isn't automatically going to be faster just because it's 64-bit. Apple's own WWDC presentations mentioned this around the time of Leopard's release. Moving to 64-bit on OS X is about being able to take advantage of the modern Objective-C run-time as well as access large amount of RAM.

Funny, I personally know at least 4 died-in-the-wool Windows users who say that iTunes runs just fine on their XP, Vista, and 7 systems. I guess it's just you. Fix your Windows box would be my advice.

Oh it really, really isn't just me. Spend 5 minutes on the internet and see what Windows users think of iTunes. Or better still, read what Paul Thurrot thinks of it. His rants on how terrible iTunes is on TWIT shows are legendary. And he's absolutely right, iTunes is unimaginably terrible.

Here's are some quick examples - when syncing my iPhone 4, iTunes locks up windows almost completely. I can move the mouse pointer, but that's about it. When importing new content into iTunes my system locks up completely until it's finished, and this can take a LONG time. iTunes crashes often, for me about 5-10 times a week. iTunes when sitting dormant occupies at least 200mb of RAM... yes, 200mb for a database app with a couple of codecs thrown in. When playing video this can grow to up to 400mb. Even navigating the store is painful as iTunes can't scroll down a page at any more than 10fps or so.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

As a comparison the Zune desktop app runs flawlessly at 60fps and multi-tasks without a hitch. It also looks beautiful and occupies 80mb tops.

just downloaded the update for snow leopard. riddle me this; if itunes is now "proper" cocoa/64-bit, then why is it incompatible with app extensions such as Afloat? also, the fact that it's 64-bit for Lion only leads me to believe that some OS-level hackery has been employed to make this happen

Or they just did not want to bother testing and releasing a 32-bit version so they made it Lion only...

Difficult to imagine a world where iTunes isn't a piece of festering sewage. Maybe things are better in MacOS now, but in the Windows world iTunes is unimaginably terrible. No other piece of mainstream, mass market software is so crushingly slow, so staggeringly unstable, and so painfully clumsy to use.

simple fix really, get a Mac. Works great just like the Mac version of Safari. Windows is the problem not iTunes.

What's the obsession people have with making things 64 bit? Beign 64 bit doesn't mean its faster unless you actually have files big enough to take advantage of it, if you don't then it's just slower. I guess if you use iTunes for films then it will be faster for that, apart from that though everything else will be slower with speed improvmements just being a result of actual coding improvements.

So in this "rare case" just going to 64 Bit (= using the 64 Bit instruction set) provides some performance benefits on Intel CPUs (heard about 5-20% depending on your code) while e.g. going to 64 Bit on PPC hardware didn't help performance wise. In some cases the greater pointer size even degraded the performance on PPC machines while I heaven't noticed that on the Intel platform yet.
May be the other advantages are able to overcompensate this disadvantage on Intel 64.

In case of iTunes IMHO the big problem was that due to the legacy carbon layer task / thread and workload switching was not great.
So if a background task consumed a lot of processing power e.g. for synchronization or encoding and the user wanted to invoke some additional actions on the UI the app and sometimes even the system got sluggish because the demanded shift of resources to the UI or other tasks didn't instantly take place insuring fluent interaction.

Carbon is mostly 10 year old code originally written for single core PPC CPUs, not perfectly integrated in the OS X core system and it's new APIs. Plus it doesn't benefit from newer GPU accelerated UI APIs. It was designed for transition and cross-plattform development (iTunes for Windows).

I haven't tested it much yet, but from my first impressions it seams to be a great leap forward (at least the 64 Bit Lion version). May be there is is still some compatibility code for older hardware left.

Edit: Just saw there ware already a lot of sufficient answers posted while I was sidetracked with other stuff.

The number one application that crashes my Mac is iTunes, I am hoping 10.4 is better, but not holding my breath.

The divide between users who like and dislike iTunes is very interesting to me, and I wish I could explain it somehow. When some posters here say they are having problems with iTunes on Mac and/or PC, or even that they hate iTunes, I take them at their word.

Conversely, in my experience using iTunes on no less than 6 Macs over the years (both mine and my wife's) we have never had an issue with iTunes. Not at all. It has never caused our Macs to freeze up, and I think has only unexpectedly quit one time across all these machines. It has been very solid. Even when I have had failing hard drives, or overheating/fan issues, iTunes has never so much as given a hiccup.

I do wish that Apple wouldn't cram so much into one application, or at least I wish they had renamed it at some point so that the name more accurately reflects its function, but it has been a great application. If it happens to get a speed boost from 64 bit mode, then that will be great. But even if it doesn't, I enjoy using it.